1. Does speed matter? The fact is, most of your favorite web services are being hosted outside of Malaysia. This includes pictures you’ve uploaded to your Facebook account, your daily ‘tweets,’ your favourite Youtube videos and more; and these are just some of our day-to-day online activities. Another fact is that no one has ever asked me where those services are hosted. They bear with long loading times because they want those services badly. Do you want mukabuku.com for the sake of it is hosted inside Malaysia and it just loads faster?

2. Let’s look at the differences in loading speed for a services hosted inside and outside Malaysia. First, let’s forget the fact that it takes you 12 hours by plane to reach the UK. Data transfer doesn’t work in that way, it’s much, much faster. The difference shown is in milliseconds. In most cases, the differences are less than 2 seconds, or 200 milliseconds. Does this really make a big difference?

3. Whatever the case, the speed of things is increasing. I started using the Internet via dial-ups, and at the time, that was fast enough for me. Then, in comes Streamyx and broadband, which got me all excited. Then, last week, I got Unify installed and, basically, it keeps getting faster and faster. With every upgrade, the gaps are minimized, and soon, there’ll be no gaps or close to no gaps at all!

The comparison between services hosted inside and outside Malaysia

Facebook servers in the US

Streamyx website hosted in Malaysia

This test will list MX records for a domain in priority order. The MX lookup is done directly against the domain’s authoritative name server, so changes to MX Records should show up instantly. You can click Diagnostics , which will connect to the mail server, verify reverse DNS records, perform a simple Open Relay check and measure response time performance. You may also check each MX record (IP Address) against 147 DNS based blacklists . (Commonly called RBLs, DNSBLs)

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/Public/Tools/MxLookup.aspx

Download of your email and speed to access the website is slower in US server, if the users are from Malaysia

This is quite a common statement I have been hearing, all this while. It is kinda ‘logical’ to think that way knowing that US is geographically located in the far far land from Malaysia. But

1. Facebook, Gmail, Twitter and many sites you are using daily are hosted in US

2. The difference could be in miliseconds…. Yes, ‘mili’. Today, the earth turn faster, who cares?

‘watt1@hanafos.com’ on 22/02/2010 11:32 AM
501 5.1.3 Bad recipient address syntax

If you look closely, the open and close quote are mistakenly included as part of the email address. This problem usually happen to Outlook when someone reply an HTML email.

Remove the quote or enter the email address manually can solve the problem.

DNSreport started as a free tools to run your mail server against 100 over tests. The result is a full page report to tell you where goes wrong and why! Anyway, the full report is now stripped-down in the free service. Without subscribing to their paid service, users are able to view a summary of your test result. The result is layman-proof, check it out!

2) Is your mail server running on a small scale setup?

Check the IP address of your Webmail, POP, SMTP and Website. If all of them are identical, your mail server must have installed all these services in one server. Putting all eggs in one basket, bad ideas! You can use the web-based Dig tools from Geektools!

3. Is your mail server hosted in just one or multiple data centre?

Again, based on the Dig tools, you can tell if most of the IP address are in the same class (only the last set of numbers are different). If they are, chances they are in the same data centre. Geographically-dispersed data center provides higher availability support.

4. Do you have a Reverse DNS?

It is not end of the world if you don’t’ Anyway, having one means you email are less likely to be marked as Spam! Use AOL Postmaster’s Reverse DNS Check.

5. The recipient’s email address has some problems, how to verify?

Use Free Email Address Verifier. This email verification tool actually connects to the mail server and checks whether the mailbox exists or not.

Are you a Lazy bugs? Email Pin (pin@1.com.my). He can run the test for you, free of charge!

Recently, we have decided to include the total downtime in hour & minute format, to better reflect the performance of each company instead of using percentage. Perhaps, it is clearer to see the pain of not able to access your email this way :)

Malaysia Email Hosting Review

For those who has referred to this email report, you might also want to consider the following measurement before making a decision:

1. Do they have enough bandwidth and hardware resources to cater for total number of email users they have? Again, those offering unlimited mailbox might have a problem with this.

2. Your email service is not one, but a combination of various services and applications including POP, SMTP, IMAP, Webmail, Email Control Panel, Mobile Access, Mail Exchange, DNS, Spam & Virus filtering, etc. Features, software upgrade, bug fix, check them out!

3. Yes, domain name. Lost it means you lost your email. Make sure someone is taking care of it including renewal and updating of WHOIS information.

4. Those web hosting package bundling with email is not good. Email hosting is not free gift, why bundling it and make it less important when the fact is, clients use their email more often that the web! What happens if your web hosting expire and your email services will be terminated as well? Email and web are completely two different services!

5. Some email diagnose or test… This can be techy but it is not that difficult at all. Check if they have Reverse DNS corretly configured? Minimun two MX records? Geographically dispersed network? Blacklist?…

Need help on email diagnose?

Need a review on web hosting too?

To use POP3 method, you can use Outlook Express or Outlook. Yes, you need to do some setting before you can use. The emails are downloaded to your PC (through this setting can be overridden too).

Webmail method is easier. Gmail is one of them. In quick, your access to your mailbox is the same as like you are browsing a website.

Different methods use different port. What is port? Your broadband or Internet connection connects you and the servers via different port. We used to say a connection is down. But what users are not aware is, they didn’t mention what port is down.

In the case where your Webmail is down, you can try POP3. There is a convenient Web-based POP3 service which you can use when your Webmail is down, check out www.Mailreader.com

I was referred to RealMetrics, the leading publisher of unbiased metrics for online service providers. Their Email Hosting report compares the Uptime, Message Delivery Reliability, Message Delivery Latency, and Support Response Time of the top Email Hosting providers.

Apparently, Mailtrust is in their list and stay at the top-most position, showing undoubtly the most reliable performance. We are proud to be their exclusive partner in Malaysia, visit us at www.1.com.my.